The Internet and Americans' Resistance to Leadership

An upcoming report from Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership once again confirms that most Americans long for leaders better than the ones they now have. The 2009 National Leadership Index (NLI) reveals that our confidence in leaders is above average in only thee sectors—military, medical, and nonprofit. On one level, then, Americans are like everyone else—we seek leaders who have the real or imagined qualities and capacities that we associate with great leaders. But on another level, one deeper and more telling, Americans have always been, since the start, resistant to leadership, reluctant to grant anyone the right to tell us what to do.